Looks like AF #1710 had an in-flight emergency shutdown earlier today into Hamburg, Germany. Flight seems to have landed safely. I know this flight well having flown this many times in the past to visit my wife's hometown. Anyone know the cause of the shutdown as the return flight was cancelled?

An Air France Airbus A319-100, registration F-GRXL performing flight AF-1710 from Paris Charles de Gaulle (France) to Hamburg (Germany) with 93 passengers and 5 crew, was descending through FL200 towards Hamburg when the crew declared emergency reporting an engine (CFM56) had failed and was shut down. The aircraft continued for a safe landing on Hamburg's runway 23 about 20 minutes later.

The return flight AF-1711 was cancelled, the passengers were rebooked onto the next flight AF-2311 flown by an A321-200 registration F-GTAU instead of the scheduled A320 and are estimated to reach Paris with a delay of 5 hours.

Sh1t happens, but happens very rarely when it comes to modern turbine engines. What's more, the CFM56 is one sturdy little donk even in the realm of turbofans, and it's a very rare occasion indeed when one decides to give up the ghost.

Why the little donk gave up is anyone's guess, but as this story so splendidly shows even losing an engine on a modern airliner is an event almost devoid of drama. "Losing one" is actually one of the failure scenarios airline pilots are trained the most in, albeit it's usually thrown at you 3 seconds before V1 on a wet runway with a crosswind and max take-off weight. Once you're up, or indeed as in this case already going down, landing on one is a piece of pish on any modern airliner - particularly one blessed with digital FBW.

From receips and radials over straight pipes to big fans - been there, done that, got the hearing defects to prove